Noteworthy conference in British Columbia - May 2007

It looks like an excellent conference will be taking place in Nanaimo, British Columbia this May, called "Nobody's Child, Everybody's Children: An International Conference on New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies". (By the way, B.C. is above Washington State, for you Americans :-) It should be well worth your travel pennies if you can afford it. I would absolutely love to go to this conference but alas, I just don't have the funds at the moment. I'm going to monitor their website and hope to acquire as much information as possible about what took place at the conference.

The main distinguishing feature of this conference is that it will feature the voices of those who are AGAINST repro tech, as well as those who are for it. It will thus allow for a real, balanced debate. Olivia Pratten will be there - the daughter of a sperm donor whom I featured on an earlier blog entry. her mother Shirley Pratten will also be speaking. By the way, they are looking for more voices of donor conceived offspring for a panel discussion, so if you would like to go, let Olivia know: opratten@mailup.net

Another person who will be speaking is Dr. Jeffrey Nisker, the man who gained fame here in Canada as a pioneer of Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD). As a doctor at the University of Western Ontario, he was the first person in Canada to offer this procedure, which involves testing IVF embryos for various traits (usually genetic or chromosomal abnormalities) and then choosing the "best" ones to implant. However, Dr. Nisker became disillusioned with the procedure and stopped doing it altogether, because the majority of his customers wanted to use PGD for sex selection, not for a serious medical reason.

Another speaker will be Elizabeth Marquardt, who recently finished the excellent report "The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children's Needs". Also read an article by her here: "My Daddy's Name is Donor".

I've made a "poster" for the conference at the top left. Unfortunately the pic is not "click-able" as I don't know how to do that. If anyone does, please let me know. I've put the URL underneath so you can paste and copy.

Babies are the new slaves

In talking about the growing practice of using poor women in India as commercial surrogates, where these women are inseminated with sperm from some wealthy Westerner, bear the baby and ship it off to the Western infertile couple after it is born, Dr. John F. Kilner recently got it right:

Human beings ought not to be bought and sold in this way, any more than they should be bought and sold in slavery. That the purchaser is nice and plans to treat the one purchased well does not justify purchasing a slave. Turning human beings into things to be bought is inherently demeaning, as many philosophical outlooks and political systems generally affirm, not to mention various religions including the Christian faith.

It seems like the light is dawning. At least some people are waking up to the new slavery in our midst, a slavery where the slaves are our very own children. We sell them for a price. We buy them for a price. Sure, we buy them in order to love them, but what's the difference? The crucial problem is that they had no choice in the matter. What if they didn't want to be raised by strangers? What if they wanted their real mommy and daddy? No one cares, and apparently neither should they. They should be happy because after all, they have LOVE, right?

Read the article about Indian surrogates here.

Sex selection - why not?

A Feb. 6th article in the NY Times discusses the ethics of sex selection. It turns out that people have a hard time arguing against it given all the other things that are already allowed. Thus, scholarly articles are written today in serious academic journals, concluding that "there is simply no moral justification for prohibiting parents from using sex selection technology to balance their families. "

Also thus, Dr. Jeffrey M. Steinberg, from Encino, Calif., who runs three clinics and will soon be opening a fourth in Manhattan, says nonchalantly:

''Reproductive choice, as far as I'm concerned, is a very personal issue,'' Dr. Steinberg said. ''If it's not going to hurt anyone, we go ahead and give them what they want.''

Right. There's only one little problem with this view of things, which is used to justify basically EVERYTHING that happens in repro tech. That little problem is that when they say "anyone," they forget to include the MOST IMPORTANT PERSON in the equation: the CHILD.

They intentionally leave out the child, because it would screw up their equation. If they included the child they would realize that the child IS being hurt. It's being hurt because it is being treated like a commercial product: some want a blue baby, some want a pink baby. It's all about parental satisfaction.

The child is also being hurt because often, it pays for sex-selection with its life: in IVF, one lucky girl or boy will get selected, and the rest get dumped in the garbage. So much for not hurting "anyone." What they really mean is "anyone who counts," because before a baby is officially "wanted," it means nothing to anyone, and no one seems to care if it gets hurt.

Questions every "intended parent" should answer before they go through with assisted reproduction

A traditional surrogate mother wrote these painful questions to the "intended" parents of her now three-year old son Richie, whom she rarely sees:

Why did you do this to me?
How could you take someones baby?
Did you know it hurt?
Did you know it hurt so deeply that it stopped my life as it was that day?
Do you care?
Do you love that boy like I do?
Does he feel like he's yours?
Do you love him like your own?
I miss him.
Was it all worth it to you?
How could you do this to him?
Do you wonder how he will feel when he's grown?
Do you think he will hate me?
Do you think he will understand?
Do you think he will blame me?
Will he look for me some day?
Will you be angry if he finds me?
Will you keep him from me?
Do you want him to know me?
Do you want him to love me?
Why does our relationship not matter?
Am I the only one to blame?
Are you guilt-ridden as well?
Can you feel me?
When you look at him, who do you see?
Do you see me?
Do.. you know.. who I am?
Do you realize... what I've done for you?
...What I've given up for you?
...How much I wish things could change?
Will he call me mom?

These questions say it all. Stop the awful baby trade, which has already produced so much human suffering! Every time I even think about surrogacy, I get sick to my stomach. It's unbelievable that such a practice is legal in our supposedly enlightened society. We allow people to exploit women and dupe them into manufacturing and giving up their very own babies. We fool them into thinking they are doing a wonderful deed for a poor infertile couple - and in the process we rip out their heart and give them a heartache that never goes away. It's barbaric. It's like dog breeding. It's too much to believe.

They may not care as little children, but eventually they will

This is a part of what Damian Adams wrote on his own blog on January 14, 2007:

The point is that as a juvenile you are too busy being a child to be concerned with identity issues and family relations. These don't surface until teenage years and in some instances not until adulthood. For me personally it did not change until I was 28 and had children of my own. Until that time I was a supporter of donor anonymity and also reasonably proud of myorigins. Now it is completely the opposite. Through my own childrens eyes I have been able to recognise the unbreakable bond that flesh and blood gives us. No matter what may ever happen between my wife and myself, or whatever mayhappen to me, I will always be my children's father. Nothing can ever change that. As soon as I thought about how it would break my heart that my children might ever grow up not knowing who I am, was I able to relate that to my own situation of being donor conceived. I was able to fully understand how the severance of my biological connection with my father had deprived me of family relations, it has left me with only knowing half of who I am, and has given me a different family name than the one I otherwise should have. It has also deprived me of a family heritage and family health history. I cannot answer health surveys or questions from doctors acurrately which can adversely affect my health. I was also unable to answer all of the questions in our recent national census.

Of course, prospective DI parents will probably not be deterred. The human mind has an amazing ability to ignore evidence to the contrary of what it wants to believe. They want to believe that they're not doing anything wrong and that their children will be just fine because biology doesn't matter after all (except when it does - to them). So they're able to rationalize their way out of the most obvious slap-in-the-face truth. Which is why we need the STATE to disallow this kind of behavior. Not just anonymous donation, but gamete donation in general, should be made illegal. It is wrong because it robs children of half of their biological heritage, and that is utterly selfish and incredibly immoral. It needs to be ILLEGAL, because relying on the good will of those who are desparately trying to have children is very likely to be insufficient.

Elizabeth, an aching donor child

Thanks to Michael Linden, I found a blog today that absolutely blew me away. It is at: http://frabjousdays.blogspot.com/

Michael Linden has reproduced one of her blog entries. You HAVE to read the whole thing. I won't repeat the whole entry here as it is long but ABSOLUTELY worth reading. Here is only a little part of what Michael reproduced on his blog. These are the words of Elizabeth:

I am passionately opposed to donor conception, because it deprives children of a basic human right: to know, and be brought up by, their mother and father. It is completely different from adoption, because in that case the child already exists and needs to be cared for. Donor conception exists for the convenience of people who want to be parents. Wanting a baby is a natural desire, but is not to be achieved by unethical means. Why can't infertile people adopt a baby? 'Because it wouldn't be ours.' Why do they privilege the genetic link on the one hand and deny it on the other?

YESSSS!!!! Thank you so much Elizabeth, for courageously saying the truth. Keep it up!!

The New Eugenics: the California Cryobank

The California Cryobank is an institution in the new eugenics, the propagation of the baby trade, very similar in fact to the slave trade of old. Get the baby you desire, with the characteristics you desire. The first to be auctioned off are the men who donate the sperm to make the baby. Not just every man will do.

Today, buyers don't have to stand on the dock and examine their muscles and teeth of the various people offered for sale. Instead, they can examine all of these people on their computers from the privacy of their own homes. In fact, the Cryobank does the first round for them:

Today the California Cryobank—probably the world's premier sperm bank—tests for a dozen genetic disorders and for almost as many infectious diseases. Donors must complete a 38-page, three-generation medical history, and submit to months of blood testing. The cryobank accepts only college graduates or students enrolled in a four-year program. (The cryobank's offices are in Westwood, Palo Alto, and Cambridge, Mass., meaning that most of its donors hail from USC, UCLA, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.) And donors must stand at least 5 feet 9 inches tall. By the time it weeds out the sickly, the short, and the dim, the California Cryobank accepts only 3 percent to 5 percent of applicants.

The cryobank barrages customers with choices. A recent catalog listed more than 170 men of every race, national origin, and appearance. A client can buy the entire long medical history (written in the donor's own hand, so the client can judge handwriting). Some donors make audiotapes that clients listen to.

...The California Cryobank supplies tall collegians because that is what women want. (The ideal donor, he says: 6 feet tall, college degree, brown eyes, blond hair, and dimples.)

And who is out there seeking to buy the genes of these wonderful men?

Rothman estimates that 40 percent of his clients are single women or lesbians.